


my city's still breathing

by mockturtletale



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-26
Updated: 2011-12-26
Packaged: 2018-02-06 07:43:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1850005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mockturtletale/pseuds/mockturtletale
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He buttons his coat right up to his throat and lifts his collar against the wind and he walks and he walks and he walks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	my city's still breathing

After they get home, after they’ve found reason to fight - win or lose, after the shouting and the clenched fists and the doors slammed shut, after everything goes quiet, after they make up, after Jonny falls asleep - Patrick walks. He buttons his coat right up to his throat and lifts his collar against the wind and he walks and he walks and he walks. He doesn’t think about anything he has left behind him. Not the last game they played or the last thing he said to Jonny or the way Jonny doesn’t stir when Patrick gets out of their bed.

The city is never quiet, it isn’t still. Patrick moves through the night so late that it’s almost early and even then there’s rarely an empty pavement or a doorway gone dark. People spill out onto the streets around him, laughing and talking loudly into cell phones, clutching one another’s sleeves and draping their arms around someone’s shoulders and holding hands with the people that they've loved forever and the ones they’ve just met tonight.

Nobody notices Patrick.

He walks until he’s so cold his body aches with it, and only when he can’t make it any further does he turn around and go back.

He’s quiet when he lets himself back into Jonny’s apartment. He takes his shoes off and leaves them beside Jonny’s next to the front door. He keeps his freezing fingers pinched next to the teeth of the zipper on his coat, dulling the sound it makes even though Jonny couldn’t hear the echo of it through the living room even if he were awake.

He isn’t.

Patrick pulls back the covers and carefully climbs back in next to Jonny. He lies on his back and watches the morning dawn through shadows on the ceiling they’re sleeping under. He’s still, although he rarely sleeps.

When Jonny starts to shift awake next to him, Patrick closes his eyes.

Every morning when Jonny wakes up he turns to Patrick and reaches for his hand and smiles.

Patrick offers his hand and his own smile in return.

Watching Jonny’s grin grow is what finally triggers the cracks. Patrick’s smile widens and breaks and he doesn’t look away from Jonny.

Jonny looks right back and Patrick lets whatever he sees in Jonny’s eyes fill the ripped up, ripped out, finally exposed foundations of everything that used to stand here.

**Author's Note:**

> Not true, not profiting.


End file.
